Where Are They Now? BS&T's 2012 Elite 8, One Year Later

Core systems modernization, customer experience-related initiatives and supporting regulatory compliance are among the top priorities keeping BS&T's 2012 Elite 8 honorees busy since they were recognized a year ago. Here are updates on the challenges and projects that some of the executives have been tackling in the past year.

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Quick Change

Since being recognized as an Elite 8 honoree in 2012, Capital One Bank’s commercial CIO, Julie Elberfeld, says that in many ways her role hasn’t changed — her team is still delivering on the three-year transformation of the commercial bank’s core systems.

“However, the pace of change has rapidly increased. We have implemented many of the infrastructure changes within Commercial and [are] supporting the organization’s growth,” Elberfeld says. “My team has delivered new systems that are empowering new products for treasury management and allowing our associates to concentrate on delivering great service to our customers. The changes we’ve made have us well on our way toward the systems and capabilities fitting for a top-10 bank.”

Elberfeld has continued to expand her team to more than 200 associates, and she has seen the team’s engagement score increase by almost 40 percentage points since 2010. “I am extremely proud of what they have been able to deliver and their ability to stay focused and engaged in a sea of change. It’s been a very successful and rewarding year. But we’re raising the bar and focusing on delivering a huge number of new system capabilities and infrastructure changes that will take treasury to the next level,” she says.

Elberfeld is continuing to overhaul and update many of the commercial bank’s platforms to set the organization up for anticipated future growth, and she continues to enhance the infrastructure her team delivered in the past couple of years, especially around credit, to improve the associate experience and respond to regulatory requirements (for example, those related to Basel II). Her team also is in the process of reengineering the way the firm processes payments, an effort designed to enhance customers’ ability to transact and to improve the service ­experience.

Over the past year, Elberfeld has focused on implementing agile delivery methodologies, which she says is a challenge when each huge infrastructure project needs to be coordinated with multiple vendors that each have a unique approach to delivering projects. She has moved to smaller increments of change and a more integrated and iterative process of delivery.

Peggy Bresnick Kendler has been a writer for 30 years. She has worked as an editor, publicist and school district technology coordinator. During the past decade, Bresnick Kendler has worked for UBM TechWeb on special financialservices technology-centered ... View Full Bio